Children's sleep time is getting shorter and shorter. In 2021, the Ministry of Education released a data:
Last year, the Ministry of Education issued a "sleep order" and made clear requirements for the bedtime of primary and secondary school students:
Primary school students generally have bedtimes no later than
Junior high school students have no later than
High school students have no later than
Primary school students should sleep for0 hours every day, junior high school students should reach hours , and high school students should reach hours .
So have your child slept enough? 😂
Recently, during the Australian school holiday, I took the children out to play. Niu Niu woke up from 5:30 to 6:00 every morning, and she couldn't sleep when she woke up. After trying to let her sleep again, she could only look at the sky with her eyes open and kept thinking about talking. I had no choice but to get her up, give her some simple breakfast, and let her read and play quietly by herself.
Because she got up earlier than a chicken, she could read several books every morning.
In fact, I always thought that Niu Niu could sleep until she woke up naturally. She was full of energy during the day and had a very high quality of sleep, so I didn’t do anything to prolong her sleep. Until the psychologist suggested that children are not focused, unable to sit still, and have too many small movements. In fact, it is not "energetic", but a manifestation of fatigue. - When a child is tired, he will move and do small movements to make his brain more active and keep himself awake; when he is tired, he will turn off some systems, so he is prone to emotional impairment, easily distracted, and easily react half a beat slow... so that he can continue to hold on.
super long standby on the surface, which may just be running at low power.
Only then did I realize that Niu Niu's sleep may still not be enough for less than 9 hours a day.
has no learning pressure, and I didn’t expect that I might not have enough sleep.
"not enough sleep" is not a unique dilemma for Chinese children, but a problem faced by children all over the world. According to a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Compared with peers in the last century, the average sleep time for children and adolescents in the 21st century was nearly 75 minutes shorter, and Asia is one of the fastest reduction areas.
has heavy learning tasks, and more and more interest classes: pre-class preview, after-class consolidation, check-in tasks, interest classes, sports classes ... Although we all say "children like it themselves" 😂.
After learning, children also have to relax: watch TV, play iPad games, short videos that are constantly automatically played by , or read extracurricular books.
The use time of electronic devices increases , further squeezing the child's sleep time. plus many of us adults are "staying up late". If we don't pay attention, the child will sleep late...
Sleeping full every day is crucial for children who are in the vigorous stage of growth and development. Sleeping for 7 or 8 hours is enough for adults. For children, this may be insufficient sleep.
American Society of Sleep Medicine recommends that in order to promote optimal health, sleep time for a day (including daytime naps) :
4-12 months old infants should reach
1-2 years old infants should reach
3-5 years old children should reach
6-12 years old children should reach -12 hours;
13-18 years old teenagers should reach
Source: https://www.healthychildren.org
You can compare it. Has your child's sleep time met the standard?
However, looking at the length of time alone does not necessarily indicate the problem. It is also necessary to further analyze the child's energy status during the day (whether it is energetic, active, alert, or continuous tiredness, yawning, crying, inattention, etc.), and overall health and development status.
A recent study published in "The Lancet Children and Adolescent Health" showed that children who sleep less than 9 hours a night have less gray matter than children who sleep more than 9 hours a night, especially some brain areas that are responsible for attention, memory and self-control have become smaller in size.
These differences remained after two years of follow-up, indicating that insufficient sleep affects cognitive development of children's brains, and that 's effects persist over time.
These images show the difference in brain gray matter volume between children with adequate sleep and children with insufficient sleep at the beginning of the study and 2 years later. The red area of
is the structure responsible for decision-making, impulse control,
memory and emotional regulation. The
study included a total of 8323 children aged 9-10, of which 4142 children had more than 9 hours of sleep per day, and 4181 children had less than 9 hours of sleep.
When gender, age, race, socio-economic conditions, and adolescence status were matched one by one, children with adequate sleep and insufficient sleep showed differences in the 32 behavioral tests at the beginning of the study, among which depression, thinking problems, picture-vocabulary test performance, crystal intelligence (the ability of children to acquire through learning) is the four behavioral tests that are more affected (Cohen’s d＞0.15).
provides long-term follow-up of these children, and researchers found that long-term lack of sleep in will continue to affect children's behavior, neurocognition and mental health. This also suggests that early sleep intervention may help improve children's long-term brain cognitive development.
Enough sleep is conducive to the improvement of children's attention, behavioral performance, learning, memory, emotional regulation ability and quality of life, and promotes their healthy physical and mental development.
In contrast, children with insufficient sleep have problems with their attention, behavior and learning. In a sleep trial, children with insufficient sleep were more difficult to concentrate than children with normal/prolonged sleep.
The impact of insufficient sleep also varies depending on age and gender. In some studies, it was observed that for older children and boys, the impact of insufficient sleep is even more serious.
Most of the past views believed that as they get older, children's sensitivity to sleep deprivation should gradually decline. But don't forget that older children fall asleep later and sleep shorter than younger children. In addition, learning pressure and the increase in time of using electronic products ... Further compressing their sleep time is actually very unfavorable to their physical and mental health.
As for why insufficient sleep has different effects on boys and girls, the researchers explained this: Compared with boys, most girls move less and quieter during the day and before bedtime, which means that girls have better sleep quality; likes to be noisy (especially at night), and lack of sleep, boys are greatly affected.
Deficiency of sleep is also closely related to obesity . A meta-study of 56,584 children from 10 different countries showed that short sleep in children is significantly associated with an increase in future obesity (OR 1.76, 95% CI: 1.39, 2.23). For every 1 hour/day increase in sleep, the chance of overweight/obesity will decrease by 21% .
Some studies also believe that insufficient sleep in children is related to the increased risk of hypertension and diabetes , but these conclusions are still controversial.
A study in the United States in 2020 aimed at evaluating the impact of adequate sleep on the healthy development of children, including 49,050 children aged 6-17 years of , and sleep time ≥9 hours was defined as adequate sleep.
In the evaluation of five signs of healthy development of children, children with adequate sleep are more likely to perform better than children with insufficient sleep.Compared with children who lack sleep, children with adequate sleep:
show interest and curiosity in new things increases
complete homework as required increases
pay attention to whether you perform well in school increases
strives to complete the tasks you have already started,
can maintain calmness and control your own abilities when facing challenges, and it also improves.
To talk about it, no one has a better say than children in East Asia. Compared with their peers in Europe, students in East Asia sleep on average 11-2 hours .
In South Korea, there is even a saying in "Four Dead Five Dead" , which means that you can get into your favorite university by sleeping for 4 hours a day, but if you sleep for 5 hours a day, you will lose your reputation.
In order to learn a little more, students had to reduce their sleep time again and again, but even the top students in cannot escape the damage caused by insufficient sleep .
Scientists from Singapore conducted such an experiment, which divided 56 top students from top high schools into two groups. The control group slept for 9 hours a day. The experimental group first experienced only 5 hours a day for a consecutive week, and then experienced a three-day sleep recovery period (sleeping 9 hours a day).
Those top students who have been driving for a week in a row, 's continuous attention, working memory and executive functions gradually deteriorate, their sleepiness increases every day, and their positive emotions decrease. Even after 2 days of sleeping, they still feel sleepy and their attention has not returned to normal.
Not only that, when the control group students with adequate sleep were facing repeated tests and learning tasks, would process information faster and faster . The students with insufficient sleep showed more slow . After 2 days of sleep recovery, there was still a certain gap between them and the control group.
Even for learning, you cannot just sacrifice your sleep time. You still have to sleep! Spend more time to sleep, and you may learn better.
In fact, everyone knows the basic sleep strategies. How to do it should be done to figure out why children are unwilling to sleep and why they sleep short is the key.
For example, Niu Niu, I used to think that as long as I reach school age, children will want to sleep in like I used to 😂. But Niu Niu has never slept in! Her biological clock is super accurate and she wakes up from 5:30 to 6:00 every morning. After waking up after 5:30 in the morning, it was difficult for her to sleep again. Even when she was lying in bed, she could only open her eyes to see dawn and couldn't help but want to talk. In this way, might as well get her up, play quietly for a while, and read the book~
So if you want to extend Niu Niu's sleep duration, you may only start with "sleeping early". I used to think that she should have had enough sleep, so I didn't pay special attention to letting her go to bed earlier.
Try to prepare 45 minutes in advance before going to bed, take a shower, wash your hair and brush your teeth, change your pajamas, turn off the TV, and read quietly. The child can still go to bed early in 15 minutes, 20 minutes or 30 minutes. Compared to the time before, I started to stop playing and go to bed at around 9 o'clock, and the average time was 30 minutes ahead of schedule.
During the day, in order to avoid the child being too tired, you can add some rest time - you don’t have to fall asleep, just rest quietly for a while. If you have the chance to calm down, Niu Niu may fall asleep. It was too exciting and kept getting excited, and it seemed to be energetic. In fact, as mentioned earlier, the child may be running semi-off.
Just as I observed, sometimes when Niu Niu is very tired, she is prone to not hearing us - this may be the reason why the teacher asked us to take her to test her hearing in the past (there is no problem with hearing).
(Does every child meet the symptoms? The word that makes you most anxious is called " sensory disorder ")
is tired and the child is prone to lose his temper. All parents should have experienced this. When you find that the child is tired, even if can't sleep, you can provide her with a quiet environment to rest for a while. Drawing, listening to children's songs, reading picture books... These are all quiet and relaxing activities.
Different children do not have enough sleep. Let’s see if your child is the following:
gives children time to play.
If the child has too much time to go to the evening, he is going to work in interest classes, doing homework, and having a family dinner... he has not watched cartoons or played with toys yet, so he has to go to bed.
Children will not be willing to sleep if they don’t have enough play with them (in fact, many adults are the same, right?). In the evening, you might as well reserve a period of time for your children. They can watch cartoons, draw, play with toys, read books, etc.
Restrict children from using electronic products.
Do not let your child touch the electronic screen 1 hour before going to bed.
Studies have shown that for every hour the daily use of electronic products increases, the probability of sleeping on time decreases by 126% , and the probability of sleeping enough to sleep is reduced by 119%. Therefore, it is recommended that children keep their daily contact with electronic products within 1 hour.
American Pediatrics Association’s 12 suggestions on children’s “screen time”
Can two or three-year-olds really benefit from iPad?
Do this to reduce the damage to children by electronic screen
If the child does not have enough sleep, it is recommended to not sleep enough time, so there is no need to worry too much.
Children who lack sleep have decreased attention and slow movement during the day, and they have symptoms such as yawning, closing their eyes, lying on the table, dull eyes, and staring. Parents and teachers observe these symptoms, which shows that the child is indeed sleep-deficient and needs attention.
If the child just sleeps less, but is still very active and energetic during the day, then we don’t have to care too much about whether the child is not sleeping enough. Maybe he/she is an energetic child-everyone’s sleep needs are different.
has been sleeping for a long time, but the child is still listless. It may be...
has been sleeping for enough time, but not sleeping well will also affect the child's spirit the next day. Learn to identify the child's sleep problems, including is not easy to wake up at night, will you snore, apnea during sleep, or breathing loudly and heavy breathing during sleep.
Most sleep problems caused by diseases are not difficult to treat. If you find that your child has sleep problems or bad sleep habits, you can ask your pediatrician for help.
There are many reasons for snoring. All of them have nothing to do with sleeping soundly
We all hope that children can have a good sleep, not only to be good to them, but also to us~ Do you have any suggestions for getting your children to sleep well? Come and share it!
Reference, swipe up to view
1. Paruthi S, Brooks LJ, D'Ambrosio C, Hall WA, Kotagal S, Lloyd RM, Malow BA, Maski K, Nichols C, Quan SF, Rosen CL, Troester MM, Wise MS. Recommended amount of sleep for pediatric populations: a consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. J Clin Sleep Med 2016;12(6):785–786.
2. Yang FN, Xie W, Wang Z. Effects of sleep duration on neurocognitive development in early adolescents in the USA: a propensity score matched, longitudinal, observational study [published online ahead of print, 2022 Jul 29]. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. 2022;S2352-4642(22)00188-2
3. Lundahl A, Kidwell KM, Van Dyk TR, Nelson TD. A meta-analysis of the effect of experimental sleep restriction on youth's attention and hyperactivity. Dev Neuropsychol 2015;40(3):104e21.
4. Ruan H, Xun P, Cai W, He K, Tang Q. Habitual sleep duration and risk of childhood obesity: systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. Sci Rep 2015;5:16160.
5. Matricciani L, Paquet C, Galland B, Short M, Olds T. Children's sleep and health: A meta-review. Sleep Med Rev. 2019;46:136-150.
6. Hoi See Tsao, MD; Annie Gjelsvik, PhD; Sakina H. Sojar, MD; Siraj Amaah, MD, MPH. Sounding the Alarm on the Importance of Sleep: The Positive Impact of Sufficient Sleep on Childhood Flourishing. Pediatrics (2020) 146 (1_MeetingAbstract): 49–50.
7. David Rapoport, BS; Ruth Milanaik, DO; Nallammai Muthiah, BS; Andrew Adesman, MD. Early Childhood Digital Media Use: Inverse Associations with Sleep Time Consistency and Sleep Duration. Pediatrics (2019) 144 (2_MeetingAbstract): 52.
8. Lo JC, Ong JL, Leong RL, Gooley JJ, Chee MW. Cognitive Performance, Sleepiness, and Mood in Partially Sleep Deprived Adolescents: The Need for Sleep Study. Sleep. 2016;39(3):687-698.
9. HealthyChildren.org. Healthy Sleep Habits: How Many Hours Does Your Child Need? https://www.healthychildren.org/English/healthy-living/sleep/Pages/healthy-sleep-habits-how-many-hours-does-your-child-need.aspx?_ga=2.240139267.167261190.1662109050-572235127.1662109050_gl=1*v1cqan*_ga*NTcyMjM1MTI3LjE2NjIxMDkw NTA.*_ga_FD9D3XZVQQ*MTY2MjEwOTA1MC4xLjEuMTY2MjEwOTY3Ni4wLjAuMA..
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